Umdat as-Salik wa 'Uddat an-Nasik (Reliance of the Traveller and Tools of the Worshipper, also commonly known by its shorter title Reliance of the Traveller) is a classical manual of fiqh for the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence. The author of the main text is 14th-century scholar Shihabuddin Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn an-Naqib al-Misri (AH 702-769 / AD 1302–1367).
Al-Misri based his work on the previous Shafi'i works of Imam Nawawi and Imam Abu Ishaq as-Shirazi, following the order of Shirazi's al-Muhadhdhab (The Rarefaction) and the conclusions of Nawawi's Minhaj at-Talibin (The Seeker's Road).

Umdat as-Salik was translated into English by the American Muslim scholar Nuh Ha Mim Keller in 1991 and became the first translation of a standard Islamic legal reference in a European language to be certified by Al-Azhar. The translation comprises 26 sections titled according to the letters of the English alphabet, Book A, Book B, Book C, etc.

Books A through C contain introductory material forming a guide to fiqh compiled by Keller. Books D through O correspond to the original work of al-Misri, commencing with an "Author's Introduction". Following are translations of eight shorter works - Books P through V - which address topics such as personal ethics, character, and traditional Islamic Sufism, and include famous classical texts such as Al-Ghazzali's Ihya’ ʿulum al-din and Nawawi's Riyadh as-Saaliheen. Book W consists of extensive notes and appendices, Book X offers thumbnail biographies of hundreds of figures mentioned throughout the work, and Books Y and Z conclude it with a bibliography and indexes.

Certain sections of the book were left untranslated (although the original Arabic text is retained), as Nuh considered them irrelevant to modern societies. These parts include a section on slavery, describing the rights and duties of slaves and their masters, as well as some smaller sections such as, for example, a discussion on fixing utensils using gold.

1.
Islam in the United States
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Islam is the third largest religion in the United States after Christianity and Judaism. According to a 2010 study, it is followed by 0. 9% of the population, compared with 70. 6% who follow Christianity,22. 8% unaffiliated,1. 9% Judaism,0. 7% Buddhism, and 0. 7% Hinduism. According to an estimate done in 2016, there were 3.3 million Muslims living in the United States. American Muslims come from various backgrounds and, according to a 2009 Gallup poll, are one of the most racially diverse religious groups in the United States, native-born American Muslims are mainly African Americans who make up about a quarter of the total Muslim population. Many of these have converted to Islam during the last seventy years, conversion to Islam in large urban areas has also contributed to its growth over the years. While an estimated 10 to 30 percent of the slaves brought to colonial America from Africa arrived as Muslims, prior to the late 19th century, most documented non-enslaved Muslims in North America were merchants, travelers, and sailors. From the 1880s to 1914, several thousand Muslims immigrated to the United States from the territories of the Ottoman Empire. About 72% of American Muslims are immigrants or second generation, in 2005, more people from Muslim-majority countries became legal permanent United States residents—nearly 96, 000—than there had been in any other year in the previous two decades. In 2009, more than 115,000 Muslims became legal residents of the United States, one of the earliest accounts of Islams possible presence in North America dates to 1528, when a Moroccan slave, called Estevanico, was shipwrecked near present-day Galveston, Texas. He and four survivors subsequently traveled through much of the American southwest, an early Egyptian and possible Muslim immigrant is mentioned in the accounts of the Dutch settlers of the Catskill Mountains and recorded in the 1884 History of Greene County, New York. According to this tradition, an Egyptian named Norsereddin settled in the Catskills in the vicinity of the Catskill Mountain House and he befriended the local indigenous American chief, Shandaken, and sought the hand of his daughter Lotowana in marriage. Rejected, he poisoned Lotowana and in consequence was caught and burned alive, records from the American Revolutionary War indicate that at least a few likely Muslims fought on the American side. Among the recorded names of American soldiers are Yusuf ben Ali, Bampett Muhamed, the first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation was the Sultanate of Morocco, under its ruler Mohammed ben Abdallah, in the year 1777. He maintained several correspondences with President George Washington, on December 9,1805, President Thomas Jefferson hosted an Iftar dinner at the White House for his guest Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, an envoy from Tunis. Bilali Muhammad was a Fula Muslim from Timbo, Futa-Jallon, in present-day Guinea-Conakry, while enslaved, he became the religious leader and Imam for a slave community numbering approximately eighty Muslim men residing on his plantation. During the War of 1812, Muhammad and the eighty Muslim men under his leadership protected their masters Sapelo Island property from a British attack. He is known to have fasted during the month of Ramadan, worn a fez and kaftan, in 1829, Bilali authored a thirteen-page Arabic Risala on Islamic beliefs and the rules for ablution, morning prayer, and the calls to prayer. Known as the Bilali Document, it is housed at the University of Georgia in Athens

2.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa

3.
Al-Azhar University
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Al-Azhar University is a university in Cairo, Egypt. Associated with Al-Azhar Mosque in Islamic Cairo, it is Egypts oldest degree-granting university and is renowned as Sunni Islam’s most prestigious university, in addition to higher education, Al-Azhar oversees a national network of schools with approximately two million students. As of 1996, over 4000 teaching institutes in Egypt were affiliated with the University and it was one of the first universities in the world, and the only one in the Arabic world to survive as a modern university including secular subjects in the curriculum. Today it is the centre of Arabic literature and Islamic learning in the world. In 1961 additional non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum and its mission is to propagate Islam and Islamic culture. To this end, its Islamic scholars render edicts on disputes submitted to them all over the Sunni Islamic world regarding proper conduct for Muslim individuals. Al-Azhar also trains Egyptian government-appointed preachers in proselytization and its library is considered second in importance in Egypt only to the Egyptian National Library and Archives. Fatimah, was called Al-Zahra, and it was named in her honor and it was founded as mosque by the Fatimid commander Jawhar at the orders of the Caliph and Ismaili Imam Al-Muizz as he founded the city for Cairo. It was in Jamadi al-Awwal in the year 359 A. H and its building was completed on the 9th of Ramadan in the year 361 A. H. Both Al-Aziz Billah and Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah added to its premises and it was further repaired, renovated and extended by Al-Mustansir Billah and Al-Hafiz Li-Din-illah. Studies began at Al-Azhar in the month of Ramadan,975, according to Syed Farid Alatas, the Jamiah had faculties in Islamic law and jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, Islamic astronomy, Islamic philosophy, and logic. The Fatimids gave attention to the studies at the time when rulers in other countries declared those who were engaged in philosophical pursuits as apostates. The Greek thought found a reception with the Fatimids who expanded the boundaries of such studies. They paid much attention to philosophy and gave support to everyone who was known for being engaged in the study of any branch of philosophy and these books were destroyed by Salah-ud-Din Ayyubi. An Islamic womens faculty was added in the same year. Al-Azhar has a membership that represents the schools of Al-Ashari and Al-Maturidi, the four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. Al-Azhar has had a relationship with Wahhabism and Salafism. Although al-Azhar is not monolithic, its identity has been associated with Sufism

4.
Gold
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Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79. In its purest form, it is a bright, slightly yellow, dense, soft, malleable. Chemically, gold is a metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions, Gold often occurs in free elemental form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, and in alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the element silver and also naturally alloyed with copper. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium, golds atomic number of 79 makes it one of the higher numbered, naturally occurring elements. It is thought to have produced in supernova nucleosynthesis, from the collision of neutron stars. Because the Earth was molten when it was formed, almost all of the present in the early Earth probably sank into the planetary core. Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of acid and hydrochloric acid. Gold also dissolves in solutions of cyanide, which are used in mining and electroplating. Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but this is not a chemical reaction, as a precious metal, gold has been used for coinage, jewelry, and other arts throughout recorded history. A total of 186,700 tonnes of gold is in existence above ground, the world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. Gold is also used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine. As of 2014, the worlds largest gold producer by far was China with 450 tonnes, Gold is cognate with similar words in many Germanic languages, deriving via Proto-Germanic *gulþą from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃-. The symbol Au is from the Latin, aurum, the Latin word for gold, the Proto-Indo-European ancestor of aurum was *h₂é-h₂us-o-, meaning glow. This word is derived from the root as *h₂éu̯sōs, the ancestor of the Latin word Aurora. This etymological relationship is presumably behind the frequent claim in scientific publications that aurum meant shining dawn, Gold is the most malleable of all metals, a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, and an avoirdupois ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be thin enough to become semi-transparent

5.
Islamic views on slavery
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Slavery was a mainstay of life in pre-Islamic Arabia and surrounding lands. Early Islamic dogma forbade enslavement of free members of Islamic society, including non-Muslims, in later classical Islamic law, the topic of slavery is covered at great length. Slaves, be they Muslim or those of any religion, were equal to their fellow practitioners in religious issues. In theory, slavery in Islamic law does not have a racial or color component, Slaves played various social and economic roles, from domestic worker to high-ranking positions in the government like Emir. Moreover, slaves were employed in irrigation, mining, pastoralism. Some rulers even relied on military and administrative slaves to such a degree that they seized power, in some cases, the treatment of slaves was so harsh that it led to uprisings, such as the Zanj Rebellion. However, this was a rather than the norm, as the vast majority of labor in the medieval Islamic world consisted of free. For a variety of reasons, internal growth of the population was not enough to fulfill the demand in Muslim society. This resulted in massive importation, which involved enormous suffering and loss of life from the capture, the Quran provides for emancipation of a slave as a means of religious atonement for sins. The Arab slave trade was most active in West Asia, North Africa, in the early 20th century, slavery was gradually outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France. For example, Saudi Arabia and Yemen only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain, Oman followed suit in 1970, and Mauritania in 1905,1981, and again in August 2007. However, slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented presently in the predominantly Islamic countries of Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, many early converts to Islam were the poor and former slaves. One notable example is Bilal ibn Rabah al-Habashi, Slavery was widely practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as in the rest of the ancient and early medieval world. The minority were white slaves of foreign extraction, likely brought in by Arab caravaners stretching back to biblical times, native Arab slaves had also existed, a prime example being Zayd ibn Harithah, later to become Muhammads adopted son. Arab slaves, however, usually obtained as captives, were generally ransomed off amongst nomad tribes, the slave population increased by the custom of child abandonment, and by the kidnapping, or, occasionally, the sale of small children. Enslavement was also possible as a consequence of committing certain offenses against the law, two classes of slave existed, a purchased slave, and a slave born in the masters home. Over the latter the master had complete rights of ownership, though slaves were unlikely to be sold or disposed of by the master. Female slaves were at times forced into prostitution for the benefit of their masters, the historical accounts of the early years of Islam report that slaves of non-Muslim masters

6.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested

7.
Al-Ghazali
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Al-Ghazali has been referred to by some historians as the single most influential Muslim after the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Within Islamic civilization he is considered to be a Mujaddid or renewer of the faith and his works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that al-Ghazali was awarded the honorific title Proof of Islam. Others have cited his opposition to certain strands of Islamic philosophy as a detriment to Islamic scientific progress, although he argued for the separation of philosophy and he was born in Tabaran, a town in the district of Tus, which lies within the Khorasan Province of Iran. Al-Ghazalis contemporary and first biographer, Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, records merely that al-Ghazali began to receive instruction in fiqh from Ahmad al-Radhakani, a local teacher. He later studied under al-Juwayni, the distinguished jurist and theologian, after al-Juwaynis death in 1085, al-Ghazali departed from Nishapur and joined the court of Nizam al-Mulk, the powerful vizier of the Seljuq sultans, which was likely centered in Isfahan. He underwent a crisis in 1095, and consequently abandoned his career. Making arrangements for his family, he disposed of his wealth, macdonald, the purpose of abstaining from scholastic work was to confront the spiritual experience and more ordinary understanding of the Word and the Traditions. After some time in Damascus and Jerusalem, with a visit to Medina and Mecca in 1096 and this seclusion consisted in abstaining from teaching at state-sponsored institutions, though he continued to publish, to receive visitors, and to teach in the zawiya and khanqah that he had built. He later returned to Tus, and declined an invitation in 1110 from the vizier of Muhammad I to return to Baghdad. He died on 19 December 1111, according to Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi he had several daughters, but no sons. Al-Ghazali contributed significantly to the development of a view of Sufism and to its integration. As a scholar of orthodox Islam, he belonged to the Shafii school of Islamic jurisprudence, Al-Ghazali received many titles such as Sharaf-ul-Aʾimma, Zayn-ud-dīn, Ḥujjat-ul-Islām. He is viewed as the key member of the influential Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy, however, he chose a slightly different position in comparison with the Asharites, his beliefs and thoughts differ, in some aspects, from the orthodox Asharite school. Al-Ghazali wrote more than 70 books on the sciences, Islamic philosophy and his 11th century book titled The Incoherence of the Philosophers marks a major turn in Islamic epistemology. The Incoherence also marked a point in Islamic philosophy in its vehement rejections of Aristotle. The book took aim at the falasifa, a defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th through the 11th centuries who drew intellectually upon the Ancient Greeks. Al-Ghazali gave as an example of the illusion of independent laws of cause the fact that cotton burns when coming into contact with fire. Averroes, by contrast insisted while God created the natural law and this long-held argument has been disputed

8.
Fiqh
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Figuratively, fiqh means, knowledge about Islamic legal rulings from their sources. He must look deep down into a matter and not suffice himself with just the apparent meaning, a person who only knows the appearance of a matter is not a faqīh. Conceptually, the attempt to understand divine law. Whereas shariah is immutable and infallible, fiqh is fallible and changeable, fiqh is distinguished from usul al-fiqh, the methods of legal interpretation and analysis. Fiqh is the product of application of usul al-fiqh, the product of human efforts at understanding the divine will. A hukm is a ruling in a given case. Fiqh deals with the observance of rituals, morals and social legislation in Islam, in the modern era, there are four prominent schools of fiqh within Sunni practice, plus two within Shia practice. A person trained in fiqh is known as a Faqih, the word fiqh is an Arabic term meaning deep understanding or full comprehension. Technically it refers to the body of Islamic law extracted from detailed Islamic sources and this definition is consistent amongst the jurists. In Modern Standard Arabic, fiqh has come to mean jurisprudence in general and it is separated in Sunni, shia and others. Qiyas, i. e. analogy which is deployed if Ijma or historic collective reasoning on the issue is not available. For example, the Quran states one needs to engage in prayers and fast during the month of Ramadan. Details about these issues can be found in the traditions of Muhammad, so Quran, some topics are without precedent in Islams early period. In those cases, Muslim jurists try to arrive at conclusions by other means, Sunni jurists use historical consensus of the community, a majority in the modern era also use analogy and weigh the harms and benefits of new topics, and a plurality utilizes juristic preference. The conclusions arrived at with the aid of additional tools constitute a wider array of laws than the Sharia consists of. Thus, in contrast to the sharia, fiqh is not regarded as sacred and this division of interpretation in more detailed issues has resulted in different schools of thought. This wider concept of Islamic jurisprudence is the source of a range of laws in different topics that guide Muslims in everyday life, Islamic jurisprudence covers two main areas, Rules in relation to actions, and, Rules in relation to circumstances surrounding actions. The Sunni schools are Hanafi Maliki Shafii Hanbali see Wahhabism Zahiri Qurtubi No longer exists Laythi No longer exists, the schools of Shia Islam comprise, Jafari Zaydi Entirely separate from both the Sunni and Shia traditions, Khawarij Islam has evolved its own distinct school

9.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker

Islamic views on slavery represent a complex and multifaceted body of Islamic thought, with various Islamic groups or …

Bilal ibn Ribah (pictured, atop the Kaaba) an Ethiopian former slave, was appointed by Muhammad as the first official muezzin. He had been emancipated when Abu Bakr paid his ransom upon Muhammad's instruction. The image depicts an episode in January 630, when he became the first Muslim to proclaim adhan in Mecca.